Sunday, October 24, 2004

I just finished watching La Vie Rurale. This is the Québec version of The Simple Life, the "reality" show with Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie, two stupid socialites going to live in middle america. La Vie Rurale is basically the same show, except the two women are from Montréal and they go work on a farm in rural Québec. Québec has a large and succesful entertainment industry. They have tv shows, movies, music and books all produced by French-Canadians for French Canada (though the more succesful artists also do well in France and I assume other francophone countries). Their shows tend to be original. You don't usually see a copy of an existing American show, as is the case with La Vie Rurale.

[Please note that the following analysis is based on my viewing of exactly one episode of each La Vie Rurale and The Simple Life.] The first thing about La Vie Rurale is that the two chicks are way hotter. People argue about Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie is so unattractive that wealth can't even help her. Anne-Marie Losique is a local celebrity (and the producer of the show; I think she's a lot smarter than she acts). Her father is the director of one of the bigger film festivals here and I get the sense that the entire family is in and out of the gossip collumns. I don't know who Jacynthe is, but since she seems to have only one name, I have to assume that she is some kind of star. Both are fine examples of the kind of beauty one can see on the streets of Montréal all too often: that deadly combination of physical assets, style and openness with some dash of something unique that I'm still trying to figure out. You can just tell when a woman is French-Canadian and it's usually a good thing.

The second thing I noticed is how good-natured the show is. The family that they are staying with seem really happy and well-adjusted. The mother and father are actually fairly attractive themselves and their daughter is, well, the classic farmer's daughter. They all seem to get along with the two stars. They help the mother prepare her wardrobe for a wedding. The locals all have a relaxed, bemused air about the whole thing. When the two girls spent a day milking the cows, another farmer remarked on how they seem to figure it out pretty quickly and ended up doing a good job. It was impossible to tell whether they did or didn't, but the sense was that they pitched in in the end.

Even the blurb for the show's publicity has a positive tone. The final sentence reads, "Grâce à cette expérience, elles feront un retour aux sources et aux vraies valeurs, si souvent oubliées dans les grandes villes." [Thanks to this experience, they return to basics and true values, so often forgotten in the cities.] The show has none of the meanness in The Simple Life, where the two girls make fun of their hosts and the hosts seem to be a bit resentful. There, there is an air of hostility. I'm stretching a bit here, but I'd argue that this difference is a reflection of the greater respect between the classes in Québec as compared to the States.

The show is on TVA, which, along with TQS, are the two commercial french television stations here. Both definitely work hard to keep the people entertained, to the point of showing (relatively) soft-core porn after eleven on the weeknights. So La Vie Rurale is not in any way intellectually superior to The Simple Life. As a matter of fact, I was met with much scorn by my french teacher when I said I was interested in watching it. There was a long segment where the two vedettes [stars] did nothing but lay on a blanket in their bikinis playing with their little dog. I'll be continuing my research for the near future...

Friday, October 22, 2004

I have encountered very little negativity towards the english here in Montréal and none directed towards me personally. It's around but very subtle. I'm sure things are different in other parts of the province and in other districts, particularily farther east, of the city.

You do see some graffiti every now and then. It was a bit of a surprise to see the one above. It's part of a long wall of really cool graffiti that divides a bunch of condos from the railroad tracks. There is certainly a lot of low-level antagonism towards the government, but one (at least one in the west) doesn't tend to think of Canada as this evil oppressor for whom one wishes death. I think the typical english canadian response to seeing this might be "oh well that might be taking things a bit far there, eh?"

Even crazier, in the Rosemount district this spring, around the time of the federal election, someone had put a large sheet outside the front of their house with the words "I'd rather be under the rule of the United States than subject to the Canadian Government" or words to that effect. For many Canadians, that would be a fate worse than death! I seriously considered knocking on their door and trying to explain to them how good they had it. My french was definitely not up to it at the time and I didn't want to get locked into the trunk of a car. But I stood outside the house for a few minutes, marvelling at the sentiment. What combination of ignorance and bad experience caused such a level of resentment in someone who had a beautiful house in a beautiful neighbourhood in one of the wealthiest and most comfortable countries in the world?

People will reveal their political positions, though they are rarely aggressive or offensive. My landlord was doing some repairs in the backyard. I went back there to ask him a french question. He happened to be talking to our neigbour to the north (not the one getting smoked out, but another yuppie). My question was "on dit j'habite à Canada ou au Canada?" [Do you say I live in Canada using à or au?]. We had a brief discussion about this (it's "au Canada"), using other examples, like "J'habite à Montréal." Then my neighbour said, "Premier, on habite au Québec alors au Canada" and gave a firm little smile. This translates to "First you live in Quebec, then in Canada" which I took to mean that in her mind the primary political and cultural entity that she inhabited was Québec, that basically she was Queboise before Canadian. And she was suggesting that since I am here in Quebec, I should also think the same way.

I didn't get her gist until I was back in the house because I was still trying to keep all the prepositions straight in my head. But I actually don't agree with her position at all. I'm glad I didn't figure it out quickly enough to say anything because my french is not good enough that I could have done it in a diplomatic way. I do sympathize with her position, but I think it is based on the same emotions that drive someone in Surrey or Windsor to think that French-Canadians get all kinds of special treatment. I think we should be Canadian first, with our regional cultures a very, very close second. They should be important and recognized, but they should not rise above our national consciousness as united Canadians.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

The title of this post is a reference to the time I first saw the full banality of the french sense of humour. My old bedroom in Berkeley was on the second floor in the back. Our next door neighbors had an apartment building in their backyard. There was a french woman who lived there and one weekend she had her whole family visiting. They came out of the apartment building and the youngest boy, who was maybe 13 or 14 got into the driver's seat of the car. The family patriarch said, "Regardez! Le conducteur qui ne peut pas conduire!" [Look! The driver who doesn't know how to drive!] And the whole family just started busting up. My sister and I were upstairs and saw and heard the whole thing. I mean they really thought that was hilarious. They couldn't get into the car for like 2 minutes they were all laughing so hard.

Anyways, this post isn't about french humour, but about drivers in Montréal. They are insane! It's funny, because today in class the teacher asked us how we found the people of Québec. She's from Haiti originally, and said how she found them so nice. Almost everybody had a story about how nice and hospitable the people here were. And then one guy told a story about how he volunteered to man a blockade during Le Tour de L'ile (a bike ride all around the city they have each summer) and two different drivers tried to drive right through it and another got out and yelled at him while even another tried to move the barricade. Then the teacher said "Sauf quand ils sont en voiture!" [Except when they are in a car]. And then everybody had stories about how nasty and aggressive people were when they were driving.

And it's true. I ride my bike alot, and I'm fairly aggressive myself (actually on a mission to destroy all cars). I had my share of encounters in New York, but New Yorkers are downright mellow compared to the montrealaise. I can't tell you how many enraged birds I've gotten from housewives in SUVs. Yesterday somebody spit at me and hit my back fender because I was too far out into the road. And when you're driving it's pretty competitive. They all think they are in the Grand Prix. People just run red lights. Quite regularily. My friend had her brother and wife come in from Calgary. They were an hour late because nobody would let them off the exit ramp! It's really dangerous to be a pedestrian here. I had a guy make a left turn into me on Mt. Royal when I was crossing on a walk sign. He actually came so close that I had to hit his hood with both my hands and bounce back. I was getting ready to whip open his door and slam his head into it when he raised both hands and pointed to his head with a look of "I'm so crazed I didn't even see you." I really look both ways when I cross the street. On the positive side, when you get in a cab, they race. That can be quite fun. Not like those neutered labradors they call taxis in New York.

So as an amendment to my last post on the gentle nature of the Québecois people, please note that they are the opposite behind the wheel of their car. I have no explanation for this except that maybe it has something to do with France. I should note, however, that this aggressive behaviour seems to cross language barriers; the anglos are just as bad.

French-Canadians are really nice. I know that some people consider that to be not such a compliment, but I don't mean it in a "damning with faint praise" way. Niceness is a fundamental part of their bearing and it permeates every level of society. My mom's cousin, who is a jewish anglo born and raised in Montréal likes to point out that they "had a ten-year revolution and only two people were killed!"

I saw two things when I first came here that demonstrated the caring and gentle nature of the Quebecois. The first was when my girlfriend and I were walking up St. Laurent, just above René-levesque. This is a sort of seedy section of town, on the way to the corner of St. Laurent and St. Catherines, where there are prostitutes, drug-dealers, punkers squeegy kids, etc. I mean this isn't Hastings and Main or anything, but it's definitely got the lower side of Canadian society.

There was a homeless guy (sans-abri) passed out on the sidewalk. He was old, with a white beard, the mahogany-tanned ankles and neck of someone who has been outside for a long time. He also had a kind of nice backpack with lots of little acoutrements hanging off it, including a plastic mug, and a nice penknife. He was fairly well equipped. As I was approaching him, two teenage boys came towards him from the other side of the street. They were grinning and pointing at him. They looked to be about 14 or 15, dressed moderately street. I was getting all geared up for a confrontation, worried about protecting some passed out guy with my girlfriend there. I was coming from NYC where interacting with anyone poor is generally avoided.

The kid said in french, "look at that nice knife" and then leaned torwards the guy. "Monsieur? Monsieur?" He gently shook the old man on the shoulder. "Ca va? Monsieur?" He had a look of genuine concern on his face. We kept moving and the two boys were still hovering over the old man, peering into his face and leaving his stuff alone.

A couple weeks later, we were on the bus. There was a woman seated behind the bus driver where he couldn't see her. She was clearly in a bad way. Her hair was a tangled mess, her clothes were filthy and she was mumbling and shouting incomprehensibly every now and then. She revealed an almost empty big bottle of Black Label (that's a cheap beer that makes a powerful 40 ouncer). I was watching her antics with the bemused and cynical air of the long-time city dweller, feeling a bit superior to the nervous people around her.

We took the bus to the end of the line. There's a metro station there, with people waiting for other buses. There was also a gang of hip-hop'd out teenagers, with bikes and skateboards. Everybody started to get off the bus except the woman. The bus driver gruffly ordered her off the bus, but she wouldn't go. A young man who'd been on the bus walked up to her. He was dressed in normal jeans and a yellow rain shell. He looked like a Canadian university student. He crouched by the woman and spoke with her gently. He then stepped outside the bus and called someone on his cell phone. He came back on the bus and helped her off, putting her on one of the benches at the bus stop.

Soon, an ambulance pulled up and two EMT workers came, sat and talked with the woman and took her away. While this all went on, the group of kids were watching and commenting. After, and I don't know how this happened, the kids all ended up gathering around the guy in the yellow jacket while he explained to them that she clearly had an addiction to alchohol and who could say what terrible things had happened to her to put her in this position but that it was best that she could go somewhere where she could remain safe and maybe get some help. I couldn't believe it. But I swear to god this really happened. I thought I had been pretty tough on that bus, not being worried about the woman, but that guy in the yellow jacket was truly the coolest. I felt pretty proud being Canadian at that moment. And felt that maybe one day I could have the balls and the selflessness and the sympathy to really give someone a hand in public.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

A couple of weeks ago, the Conseillière de la formation scolaire came to our class to give us a talk about the education system in Québec. I don't know what that fancy title translates into, but she is the person who advises students on their education and training: which schools to apply for, what materials and prerequisites are needed, things like that. She's quite knowledgeable and helpful. I had already met with her and she helped me with my C.V. and cover letter as well as giving me a long list of community centres where I might be able to apply for work.

A lot of immigrants come to Canada with certain levels of education and training. They usually need to augment their training with some official Canadian education. In many cases, this is just a case of snobbery, fear and greed. Many of the immigrants come from rigorous education and backgrounds in their fields. Our professional organizations just refuse to recognize them. That's why you have a lot of Indian architects driving cabs and venezuelan engineers working in restaurants. Fortunately, in Québec at least, a great deal of their education is subsidized. It still costs them in time to "update" their training (and lost wages during that time), but they at least have access and won't go into debt. I tell you this to explain why the Conseillière came to talk to our class.

Here's how the school system works, according to the Conseillière:

Primary school is the first 6 years of school. I don't know if they have kindgarten.

Secondary is the next 5 years. Students in Québec stay in high school a year less than students in the States or Western Canada. When you graduate, you receive a DES (Diplome des études secondaire)

After Secondary school, is where it gets interesting. If you are inclined to go to work right away, you can go to un école de formation professionelle. This is a trades school, as we know it. There is an extensive network of these schools here, with studies from computer repair to baking to woodworking and everything in between. The programs usually last from 6 months to a year with a period of apprenticeship afterwards. Employment is quite controlled here and you usually need a diploma from a trade school in order to get a job in one of those fields. The courses are quite cheap, ranging from $100 to $400 for the entire thing and judging by the competence and skill of at least the construction workers I've seen here I'd say fairly well taught.

If you want to continue your education, you go on to a CEGEP. These are sort of like junior colleges, except that they are required if you want to go to university and they offer a range of different degrees, depending on what you want to do. The most common degrees are the DEC's. There is a two year DEC which is what you take if you want to go on to university. You take a lot of general humanities and science courses, leaning towards whatever you may major in in university. The three-year DEC is more of a professiona degree, usually leading to a job upon graduation. Police officers, computer programmers, lab technicians, nurses all take the 3-year degree.

Finally, there is a shorter AEC which lasts from 6 months to 1 year and is used to specialize in something particular from another field or is often the accelerated courses for immigrants who already have a degreee in a given field. A lot of professionals get AEC's in a particular aspect of their job as continuing education.

At the higher levels, the university system is the same as we know it in the west and the states, with bachelor's, master's, phd's and all the elitism and atavistic hierarchies that go along with those things.

What I found exciting about this system is the number of options that are open to young people. They are quite uptight about certification and training here, so it's tough to get a job in a field without getting the proper training. On the other hand, the training is readily available and encouraged. There are numerous government organizations and NGO's that work just to guide students and help them find what they want. There are many schools as well. There also doesn't seem to be the same snobbery around education or the same divide. Part of it is that people are better educated generally, so you find well-read, politically astute people at every profession. But it also seems that the culture and the government associates a level of pride with any kind of work. The government employees who do all the manual labor, garbage workers, parks employees, street cleaners, etc. are literally called blue collars (les cols bleus) and they wear shirts exclaiming their pride in what they do. There is also a rich tradition of artisanship and crafts here. Many artists come from a trades background and use those skills in their work. There is a sculptor who lives down the block from me who used to be a carpenter and now works with a lot of concrete and wood. Craftsmen are treated with a lot of respect.

It's not heaven here, however, and there are certainly unhappy and unemployed people. But again, you get a sense that the government and the society as a whole, is basically in agreement that educational opportunity is crucial to life and they really push it. I find it incredibly inspiring. I was very fortunate in my own education. I went to a very rigorous private high school and I was taught well. But when I got out, my only options seemed to me at the time to be continuing on in college or just get a job. Among my friends, it seemed that those of the middle class and above went to college and those below didn't. And of those who didn't, few of them got any other kind of education. They either went into the service industry or some kind of resource work, like tree-planting, logging or construction. It basically reinforced and continued existing class divisions. What would they have done if they had many options of 1-3 year programs where the training was really practical and they had a good chance of finding work when they were done? I myself may have not gone on to my history degree had I been presented with those kinds of options.

For you Americans out there, Thanksgiving in Canada takes place in early October. In Western Canada (and I always assumed the rest of the country), it's not as huge a deal as in the states, but it's definitely a real holiday. It's a bank and work holiday, people travel for the long weekend and families get together and have a big meal with turkey or sometimes goose.

Here in Québec, it's still an official holiday (Le jour d'action de grâce, but the French-Canadians don't really seem to celebrate it. My first sense of this was when my roommate went up and down Mont-Royal, which has several large supermarkets, unable to find either pumpkin pie or canned pumpkin. He thought he was in an episode of the twilight zone ("I think that may be an indication of culture shock," I said). It's weird, because there are pumpkins everywhere. They are for sale in all the supermarkets, they have giant ones in the massive outdoor Marchée Jean-Talon and people put them on their porches, along with ears of dried corn, mini straw bales and other seasonal decorations.

I asked around after that, just about the pumpkin pie. Some people had never even heard of pumpkin pie. My priest-in-training friend, who comes from outside Ottawa said "Tarte de croustille? Ca ce n'est pas bon. On a servi tare au sucre, bien sur!" [pumpkin pie? That doesn't sound good. We had sugar pie, of course.] Those who had heard of it said, and this I find really interesting, that it was probably an American tradition. I heard this from three different people. I can tell you that Western Canadians do not think of the way they celebrate Thanksgiving as american at all. I got the same response when asking about Halloween. They celebrate it here and the kids come around, but they don't say "Trick or Treat" in french. They just ask for a little gift or offerings, very politely of course. When I said that in the west, we say Trick or Treat, I got the same response, that it was probably borrowed from traditions in the U.S.

I don't know where pumpkin pie or trick or treat came from. It could well have originated in the States, or at least elements of those cultural behaviours made their way through the U.S. before coming to Western Canada. But I think most Canadians consider them a fundamental part of their own culture. It's interesting that French-Canadians should see them as being fundamentally American and therefore non-Canadian. I think it's an example of their cultural ignorance (that sounds much more negative than I mean it) towards Western Canada. But it fits in with their general sense of being surrounded by a relentless wave of generic english culture. I'm sure that those French-Canadians who've lived in the west long enough to celebrate some Thanksgivings would see that though very similar to the American holiday, it is also a holiday that is very Canadian.

For one, it is significantly less commercial. All the pilgrims and indians and all that historical stuff, comes through American television, which we barely got in the days before cable and still most Canadians watch at a remove. The watching of a pro football game happens much more rarely and nobody watches the college games, which is a big deal in the states. And the size of gatherings are much smaller, tending to be immediate family with a few grandparents or an aunt and uncle with a couple cousins. In the US, it's a big deal, with quite large parties and often lots of friends as well. I know it doesn't sound like much, but when you're a Canadian and you come to an American thanksgiving party, it seems pretty exciting and important but it also lacks the calm intimacy the ones you're used to.

Monday, October 18, 2004

I spotted this place the first time I walked by it. It had the right look, but after years of disapointing diners in New York, I didn't get my hopes up. When my Significant Other found an apartment three blocks from it, I thought that I'd at least have to check it out.

It's an old school diner on Mont-Royal and Boyer. It has a counter with a grill behind it when you first walk in. I think the guys who run it are anglo. They definitely speak both english and french but they tend to speak english more. All the waitstaff are french, mostly women, representing the best range of diner service. There's the ones who aren't middle-aged yet, but already have a warm, matronly air who make you feel really good about your order. There's the young, kind of hot ones that you seriously contemplate hitting on, but you know that Johnny their badass boyfriend with the car would probably stomp you and then there's the really old ones who are gruff and tough but you still feel a teeny bit of love there. And of course the guys at the counter. I've never been very good at being cool, so I don't try to often. But with these guys, man, I feel compelled to play it real tough and straight. You can't fool around, but you've still got to show respect for their craft. There's the one little dude with his shirt opened to the third button and his salt and pepper chest hairs showing. He's like 5' 2" and you know he's pleased a lot of ladies. And then the darker, joking guy who gets frustrated really quickly if you're not sure about your order. He holds the spatula like he's ready to chop off your fingers with it. I definitely rehearse before going to the counter.

Their burger kicks ass. The meat is good and the bun is big and flat. You should get it "all-dressed" which means chopped lettuce pickles and some other stuff. I think that "all-dressed" is a french word. You pronounce it like it was french. The fries are good, but not my favorite. They are a bit too potatoe-y and soft for my liking, but the flavor is great (I prefer crispy). You get a trio, which is a sandwich, fries and a breuvage for 5-7 bucks depending on the sandwich. The burger trio is $4.85 before tax. But I still remember the day I went in there and only ordered a burger and the bill came back and it was $3.20. I almost wept.

The other thing is that their smoked meat sandwich is really good. I don't know where they get their meat, but it competes with Schwartz's as far as I'm concerned. I love Schwartz's. If I ever get the desire to commit suicide, I may just go to Schwartz's and eat sandwich after sandwich until I explode. But the Mont-Royal Hot Dog smoked meat sandwich is no joke. They use the right bread, slap some mustard on there and pile the meat on real thick.

My new logement is even closer to Mont-Royal Hot Dog than my girlfriend's! It's almost too close. I went a bit crazy for the first week, so now I've pulled back and am rationing visits for when the time is right. There is a small counter (different from the pick-up counter) of five seats in the smoking section that I like to sit at and read the paper. They always have copies of the Journal (the Montréal tabloid) there. Once, my girlfriends next door neighbour, un pure laine (pure wool, true Québecois), who rides a giant touring bike on the weekends and works repairing high-tension lines, saw me there and shook my hand. He's a bit of a regular (well I've seen him there two other times) so I think that got me some props among the staff.

It's awesome for people-watching as well. A classic Québec couple, the big-bellied, overly-tanned guy with the pink acapulco tank top and gold chains and his overly-skinny girlfriend, both smoking. Right next to them, an elegant older woman, hair pulled back in a tight bun spoon poised over the crown of whip cream on a bowl of green jello. Oh man, I'm starting to get hungry. Too bad my girlfriend and I got two trios from there last night!

One of the first things I noticed about Montréal is how mellow everything is when it comes to trespassing. There is a wide train line that is the border between the Plateau and Rosemount. On the north (Rosemount) side of it, there is a bike path that's quite cool. It runs behind some factories and the dump and old incinerator. The train tracks are next to you on the other side of a chain link fence. There are signs on the fence that say private property, trespass forbidden and punishable by law blah blah all the crap that train yards and tracks always have. But right after that there is a huge hole in the fence and someone had put down a pallett as makeshift steps. I really wanted to go in but thought I'd wait until I cased out the area a bit more, got a lay of the land and a sense of how things were done here.

Well I got a sense pretty quickly when I passed a woman walking her dog along the train tracks. And then a little later an older guy with his two dogs. And I saw numerous other people go through the holes in the fence just to get to the other side. It turns out these tracks are a vital part of the community here! I found a short cut that allows me to get off the bike path and to a park, allowing me to avoid three busy intersections. For a bonus, I get to pass the Belle Geuele brewery (much more on the beer here later) and sometimes smell the fresh hops a-brewing!

It's the same down at the old grain silos in Vieux Montréal. They are all fenced off, but if you just go around the outside, you can get into these really cool areas where there are ladders leading up to the high walkways. I'm too scared to go up there, but it looks possible. And nobody comes barking or yelling at you (or arresting you), all freaked out that you're on private property. It's incredibly refreshing. It gives you a sense that people and the powers that be here recognize when something is practical and useful that there is no need to apply all kinds of arbitrary rules restricting it's access. I have seen this with many things in Quebec.

On the other hand, there is also a great deal of bizarre and arbitrary formality. The biggest one I've encountered is that you have to have an appointment to open a bank account! There is some officious secretary at the entrance to the bank. I tried at 3 different banks. Don't they want me to open an account? Do I have to bring my resume next time? Needless to say, I'm keeping my BC credit union account and probably going to go to Royal Bank or something. Maybe there is some reason for this that I don't know about, but it seems more an inheritance from France, Europe where status is still really important to people.

And signing up for anything is always a big hassle with so much excessive paperwork and waiting. I appreciate that the government does a lot for the people here, but do they have to keep such detailed track of it! My french course (which is incredible) requires that I sign 5 different pieces of paper for each two month session. I don't even know what any of them are, but I feel like I'm selling my property to the railway or something. But everyone is generally so nice about the whole process, that it doesn't make me as insane as the same kind of thing in the states or the west does.

It's just weird how mellow they are about some things and so totally uptight about others.

I live in the Plateau. This is the hip french residential neighbourhood a little ways northeast of downtown. I'm told that it once was a lower-middle class place and even a bit down and out in parts, with pawn shops and things like that. It is clearly in the middle (or maybe the end) of a real estate boom. There has been tons of interior renovation and still more going on every day in the blocks around my house. Fortunately, they are not actually tearing the homes down, so the streets, which are beautiful and tree-lined, are keeping their character, even if the insides of the homes are losing theirs.

My housemate (colocataire) is an anglophone from Ontario. A good guy and a good coloc, but I wish he only spoke french. It would be such good practice! He lives in a converted garage in the back. It's quite nice and has a really nice little wood stove (une poêle). He's got electric heat, too, but his insulation isn't that great and he found that he had to keep it cranked all winter. He didn't use the woodstove (he's from Ontario) and seemed a bit reluctant to do so. After some convincing, we fired it up and it works great. There is also a fireplace in the front which I've always wanted and is one of those nice new ones that put out a decent amount of heat. So we split on two cords of wood (two "face" cords, it turns out and now I'm not sure if we got taken, but that's another story) and stacked them up on the back porch.

My coloc had the woodstove going for a couple of days. It's not really that cold yet, but he was drying clothes in his room because the dryer was broken. There was a knock on the door and I answered it. It was our next door neighbor to the south. They are a young couple who just bought the place from the older woman and her three yappy dogs. They did a lot of renovation. They were very friendly when they first moved in, but the guy seemed a bit stand-offish. Anyways, the wife was at our door and asked if she could speak to my colocataire. It was a bit strange, and I was tripping on my french trying to ask her what she wanted. I ended up taking her to the garage where she introduced herself to my coloc who was plastering the hallway.

She asked if he was planning on using his fireplace all winter and if he had another form of heat. It turns out that the smoke was blowing into her upstairs window. The chimney is only 3' high and the garage one story and there is kind of a dead spot so the wind doesn't pick the smoke up. Also, she's pregnant (of which we made a point). We wanted to be accommodating, but we also wanted to run the woodstove. I suggested that we could see if we could get the chimney raised. My roommate said he'd stop using the chimney until then. He did ask her if she'd be keeping the window open in the winter and she said she would. This seems to be either insane or not true because it gets cold here. But the thing that really bothered me was that she really seemed to be thinking we were just going to not use the stove. And then she said, "We don't really need any more air pollution here in the city."

It all ended on a cordial note and she was very polite and apologetic. The landlord (more about him later) came by with the chimney inspectors a couple days later and he's supposed to be coming back in a week or so to put up a higher chimney. It's a bit of a job, actually, because he has to run a supporting cable across to the house. But what annoyed me was my neighbour's appeal to the environment. Chopping down trees and burning them in a stove is definitely bad for the environment, but it's not any worse than the devastation caused by all the dams that create the electric heat that everyone has in their house. But I don't think she really cares about the environment. I think she cares that her new little house in the Plateau have a quaint, hip look and neighbours that are chopping wood and smoking cigarettes on the back porch don't fit in with that image.

I guess what I learned is that even in Quebec there are annoying yuppies.

I got this idea about 6 months too late. I should have been chronicling my experiences here from the first day. I was hoping to organize this journal as the events and thoughts came to me, but because I've already been here for 6 months, I'm going to be catching up on things. So please excuse me if I'm bouncing around a bit at first.

As you can read in my Description, I have some strong and unrealistic ideals about being Canadian. Please note that I believe people should attempt to do these things. Obviously, there are many reasons why people can't learn the other language or don't have a chance to learn what it's like to be in an Inuit in Nunavik. But I think that the attempt and the desire to keep contact with the many worlds within Canada should be the spirit of this country.

I also recognize that having only two official languages does not do justice to the many other cultures that are now as fundamental and important to Canada as the French and English. To be a good Canadian citizen, one must have some understanding of the culture, history and even the language of the Chinese, Punjabi, Italian, Jewish, West Indian, Portuguese, Iranian, Greek, Vietnamese (to name just a few) as well as the many First Nations civilizations and the black communities who've been here for generations.

As you have probably gathered, I like a society that is a mix of cultures. I am lucky to have been born a citizen of a country that has done a pretty good job (relatively speaking) of creating a multicultural society. I think the existence of a culture as large, vibrant and independent as Quebec, and the existence of a second language, supported by the marketplace and the government are incredible, wonderful things. I think we should treat them as precious and important, fundamental to Canada as a nation.

That is a very broad overview of my position. I'll get into these arguments and my positions in more detail in the body of this journal. But I hope to spend more time and energy on the quotidian, practical side of coming to Montréal with high school French and trying to become a part of the community here. I hope you enjoy it!

Why briques du neige?

When I first moved to Montréal, I was obsessed with the quantity of accumulated snow in the winter. I came up with a scheme to design a snow-brick making tool and hire out my services to people where I would turn all the snow in their yard to bricks and then stack it neatly. This enterprise, named briques du neige, would also be an excellent way to learn about and integrate myself into my new community. Unfortunately, before I was able to launch my plan, the Japanese invented Yuki-Taro and made me redundant. So my project morphed itself into this blog, kept the title (including the minor grammatical error which perfectly captures my functional but erroneous french) and the mission to better understand this crazy city and the Quebec culture that is such a crucial and complex part of the Canadian story.

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About Me

1/3 American, 1/3 Canadian, 1/3 Montrealer, when I'm not working for the planet and living my lucky life, I hang out on the internet and write about culture and language in Montreal, books and movies. I also rant on a wide range of subjects and try to do that here so my wife doesn't have to be the only one to suffer.